


Periphery

by cat_77



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Harm to Minors, Injury, Mild Language, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Original Character Death(s), Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 14:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1944429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint has a secret he's been pretty damn good at keeping for nearly two decades.   With the recent media attention and everyone digging deeper into the pasts of every single one of the Avengers, he should have known it would get out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Periphery

**Author's Note:**

> This one has been on the back burner for a while, but is finally done! There's death, there's violence, there's language... all the good stuff. There's also a situation that I think Clint is the most likely to have of all the team combined.
> 
> * * *

The package seemed innocuous enough when it arrived: a lopsided cardboard cube of just over a foot long in all dimensions. It was a little unwieldy when Clint picked it up from what he liked to think of the Stark Tower Concierge, but that just sort of added to the mystery of it all.

He brought it to the common room since he was bringing up deliveries for Cap and Nat as well, likely some new canvases for Steve since he was experimenting with oils lately and custom blades for his favorite assassin given their weights. He plopped everything down on the table in front of the couch to sort through to make it easier. Stark, of course, happened to be refueling his caffeine high at the time and both saw the boxes and made the announcement of, "Pressies! Anything for me?"

"Not this time," Clint replied, slapping his hands away with ease. "Want to tell Cap and Nat to come and collect?" he asked, which basically meant if he wanted to verify JARVIS already had, but it amounted to the same so it all worked out in the end.

He sliced through the tape on the side of his box and reached for the flap to open it fully as Natasha walked in. She picked up her smaller arrival and eyed his much more sizable one. "Iowa? I didn't think she had this address yet," she shrugged and stepped away for him to get back to what he was doing.

"Unless she got it from the internet?" he guessed, slicing through a secondary layer of what appeared to be styrofoam. It was no secret that the Avengers had all moved in with Stark, and Tony was beyond public record, so an address of the most ostentatious building in New York would be easy enough to obtain. The odd thing was, it was off schedule. It was another two months until his birthday, and he couldn't think of anything else that would warrant such a gifting.

Figuring there was no way to know until he opened it, he pulled back the final piece to see just what was so important. He then calmly stood, walked over to the sink in the nearby kitchen, and vomited anything he may have eaten in possibly the past week.

He could just barely hear Stark asking what that horrific smell was and Natasha's rare gasp of surprise. He rinsed his mouth with water from the tap and vaguely took in that the overhead lights took on a distinctly red tinge as Tony ordered the Tower into lockdown. He turned off the water and accepted the towel from Natasha to wipe his mouth, though he refused to accept her look of pity.

He walked back into the common room to find, as expected, the rest of the team gathering. Bruce looked ready to have his lunch join Clint's down the drain, while Steve and Thor looked confused. Tony just looked pissed.

"What, or should I say who, is that?" he demanded. He gestured towards the box angrily, as if there had been any doubt as to what he was referencing. "I swear to fuck, Barton, if one of your side jobs has returned to haunt us-"

He was cut off by Natasha's quiet, "It's not a side job."

"What?" Tony demanded, needing more than that to make sense of the current situation.

Natasha started to repeat herself, but Clint interrupted. "Her name is, was, Karen and she is a hell of a lot more than a side job," he managed, voice like the acid that still tinged in his throat. And it hurt to say it, even more than seeing the familiar blonde curls knotted with blood and gore and neatly packed in foam, but he forced out, "And even more important than her is finding Lisa."

He turned on his heel and left for his rooms, knowing Nat would explain. She would tell them about a dalliance of years ago. Of how Clint may have left the tiny traveling circus, but also managed to leave something of himself behind. Of how he sent what little he could to help Karen when she was tossed out, no one needing a pregnant teenaged stunt performer. Of how he managed to send more and even visit from time to time once he settled into a regular routine with SHIELD. Of how he needed to find his daughter before her fate matched that of her mother's.

He packed gear, weaponry, and cash, the last on the off chance he could buy his way out and pay for the safety of a child that knew him more in passing than in truth simply because he thought it would be safer. For him or for her he refused to admit. He heard his door open and looked up to find Natasha waiting and ready. "Jet is fueling now. Rogers and Banner and insisting on coming with, but Tony wants to track the courier and then join us, and Thor wants to make sure this isn't a set up to separate us," she told him. It was reasonable, and both had their own means of transportation to join them later if need be. Then, after a pause, she added, "We need to tell Fury."

He knew that, on some level. A group of agents leaving their home port on a whim to fly to Iowa of all places would probably ping on his radar. That still didn't stop him from asking, "Can it wait until we're airborne?"

Natasha shook her head. "He won't stop you, not on this." A reminder of just how much the director knew about each of them. She looked at him, considered, and announced, "I'll take care of it. SHIELD access may be beneficial in the long run."

He nodded, but couldn't bring himself to say thanks, knew she understood what it meant anyway. He looked at his fancy Stark phone, how it was dark and quiet. No response. Not that he had expected one, but he would be kidding himself to say he didn't hope anyway. Two calls, three texts sent, none received. Even if she was safe, even if she knew nothing about what was happening, he'd still need to be there for her, would still need to get on that damn plane and fly out to see for himself that she lived and she breathed and she was still whole.

He finished packing and grabbed his bow case and quiver, saw Natasha already held a bag of her own, gauntlets likely on top even if they were not yet worn. He headed for the door but paused when she said, "Clint, I-"

He cut her off with a shake of his head. There was no apologies in their line of work, there never had been. "Just... be there?" he asked with a sigh.

"I already am," she assured him, stepping back to let him through.

Fury's clout was enough to get them cleared airspace and a nice neat place to land. The car waiting on the tarmac was nicer than SHIELD's standard black SUV's, so he assumed Stark had played a role in that, though he was not at all surprised when they were followed by a familiar dark presence.

The sun was low in the sky by the time they reached Karen's simple split-level rambler. The front door was unlocked and he had a brief image of a forgetful teen, but the place itself was dark with no sign of anyone being home. Nat made the rounds, weapons at the ready, while Steve and Bruce held him back from rushing in half-cocked. She returned to the front door and shook her head silently, but stepped to the side to let him see for himself.

He flipped the lights on even though he knew the place by heart. The scuffed trail through the living room was the first sign of a struggle, an arrow pinning a scrap of black cloth to the wall in the hallway a second.

"Did your Karen know how to shoot?" Steve asked as he brushed a gloved fingertip over the fletching.

Clint shook his head. "No, but Lisa does," he replied. Then quieter, though he knew his friend would still hear him, he added, "I taught her myself."

The bow was found in the kitchen, the gentle curve snapped in two. A handful of store-bought arrows littered the floor, and at least one of the cooking knives was decidedly not in the knife block. "She went down with a fight," Natasha commented. There was neither approval or disapproval to her tone, but he nodded anyway. He kept quiet that he would rather there had been no going down at all.

Lisa's room was trashed and the damage was well beyond teenaged disregard. A bookshelf was knocked down and a screen knocked in from the outside. Anything heavy or hard looked to have been chucked about the room, and two arrow shafts were visible from where they had rolled beneath her messy bed. Clint bent down to pick one up, to see if the tip showed wear or if it had simply fallen from the empty box beside a torn open beanbag chair, and noticed a familiar pink and purple backpack near the headboard, profanity and doodles sketched about it in blue Sharpie.

The backpack was open, a school sweatshirt bunched at the top and, atop of that, the decked out StarkPhone he had bought her now that income was no longer an issue. Possibly not the most responsible choice for a teenaged girl, but its existence answered at least part of the question about the lack of response. Now he just had to figure out if it was left behind when she was grabbed, or when she ran.

He glanced through the room a little more, looking for signs, looking for something to tell him what happened and how he could fix it. His fingers trailed over certificates and awards hung from the walls, ribbons and medals draped over frames. She had made Student of the Month again, placed third in cross country. The archery medals were a moment of quiet pride, a symbol that he had an impact on her life in some way, even if he couldn't be there for her directly, even if he and her mother had thought it best he never fully would be.

The light was fading fast, but he tightened the grip on his own bow and headed for the door. "I'm going to check the back; there's a few places she could have hidden there. Finish checking the house and let me know what you find?" he directed.

Natasha rested a hand on his arm, not quite holding him back, but letting him know she could if she wanted to. "I'm going with you," she told him. She nodded to Steve usually he would be the one in charge, but even Captain America knew when to let go and let family obligations outweigh standard operating procedure. 

He waited until they were just past the threshold to sigh, "You don't have to..."

"Yes, I do," she said simply. It was followed by, "You are not alone." He heard the undercurrent: he would not be alone, not in this, and not even if he wanted to be.

The lot the rambler sat on had a neat little cul de sac in front and was edged with trees in the back. The trees weren't deep, not really, and within one hundred yards petered out just before a fairly decently busy county road. It didn't take long to search the area and, though there were footprints, they were well and truly trampled over and seemed more like the type of kids cutting through as a shortcut to school than a teenager fleeing those that had killed her mother. 

He stopped at the beat up old treehouse on the way back to the others, remembering just how long ago he had built the damn thing and having a tiny moment of surprise that it both appeared to have withstood the test of time and was still in regular use if the blanket and relatively recent paperback within it was any indication. There had been several repairs, he could tell, but most noticeable about the whole thing was the jagged arrow shaft jammed in between two boards in lower South corner. It had been stripped of its fletching and was smeared with a drying color of rust, a ponytail tie wrapped loosely around the middle.

"This wasn't fired," he told Natasha when she saw it.

She touched the color and rubbed it between her fingers. It wasn't rust, wasn't old enough or the right material to ever have it, and they both knew it. "A message," she guessed.

He nodded and pulled away, leaving the marking for SHIELD's forensic experts to analyze, already reasoning its meaning. "We head South," he said and gestured in that direction.

Natasha readily followed but tucked the tie into his pocket when she came up along side him. He would have accused her of sentiment, but he rather appreciated the effort and wasn't dumb enough to comment otherwise.

South proved to be less than enlightening. There were a few trampled bushes but not much else and, like before, the tracks ended at a busy roadside. She, or they if he was going to be honest with himself, could have hitched a ride, been dragged into a waiting vehicle, or managed to cross into a small field that led to more asphalt on the other side. His eyes were good but it was near full dark now and even he couldn't track nonexistent footprints on a solid surface without assistance.

That assistance came in the form of a familiar whine and spark of bright light. The Iron Man suit landed and Stark flipped up the face mask to ask, "What do you need?"

"To see in the dark," Clint replied with only a hint of bitterness. He gestured to the smudged footprints and trampled foliage behind him and said, "Someone came from here, and we need to know where they ended up."

Tony nodded and flipped the mask back down as he ran whatever scans he thought up on the dirt, then turned and did the same on the street itself. Cars stopped for him when he wandered across the road and Clint and Natasha jogged along behind him. Clint could almost see the continuation of damage through the field, but knew pretty much as soon as Tony stood still that they had reached a dead end.

"Tracks stop here," Tony said anyway, motioning to where some sort of vehicle had burned rubber to get away. "Either she was picked up by a friendly, or finally caught and tossed in with a less than friendly, and they got away," he explained, unnecessary apology in his tone.

He flew back to the house, lighting the way even though both Natasha and Clint could have easily found it on their own. Several times he stopped to scan along the foliage, but every time it ended with a shake of his head.

They got back to discover Steve and Bruce had canvased the immediate area. Most of the residents had been away at work or school as was normal in a working class neighborhood like this one. One elderly woman mentioned she thought she heard a car or truck backfiring, but that it was a common enough occurrence living as close to a major road as they did. Another kid, maybe a year younger than Lisa in school, said he remembered her being on the bus home, but that nothing looked out of the ordinary when he waved goodbye to her and they each went their separate ways. 

That had been only about three and a half hours before they got there, which at least gave them a timeline. She had not been taken at the same time as her mother, though why was a question yet to be answered.

Tony had set up a suite of rooms at a local hotel, more for a base of operations that wouldn't draw as much attention as a mobile command unit than for a place to actually sleep. The fact it meant that Clint would not be staying somewhere surrounded by reminders of his daughter and dead ex went unsaid. Clint went reluctantly, and only after he was assured by Steve that they had swiped Lisa's phone before some well-meaning agent locked it away.

He looked at it on the short ride to the hotel and answered at least one question: there was a series of texts from Karen time stamped that morning apologizing for missing her. From what he could piece together, Lisa's stepbrother had forgotten his laptop during his weekend visit and she had needed to run it over the night before. She had gotten back late and left early for a meeting, likely one she never made. Lisa had probably not expected to see her again until after school that evening and hadn't even known she was missing.

Clint swallowed against the idea that Karen never got to say goodbye, and concentrated instead on calling Josh and checking on his status. Agents were being dispatched, which meant Tony and Thor joined them, with Stark reasoning there was no need for Clint to redirect to a place over an hour's drive away when his kid was last seen in the immediate area. He would have gone anyway if he hadn't trusted Tony and his tech, and if Tony hadn't already taken off without him.

He was choking down a dinner that he didn't taste when he got the call from Tony that Josh's place was a no-go. There was no sign of a struggle, but there was also no sign of Josh or Lisa. There was also no sign that Karen had ever made it there, despite the laptop sitting on the desk beside the bed.

Tony being Tony meant that he wanted to take a look at the thing anyway, and Clint tuned out the comments on just how out of date the thing was and focused instead on Lisa's phone once more. Something just didn't sit right with him and not just why she didn't grab such an obvious tool for help when she grabbed her bow instead.

He figured it out about the same time he got another call from Stark. All the messages, all the texts received, had been within the last twenty four hours. The earliest had been the one from Karen and, aside from the ones Clint had sent, there was a handful from various friends from only that afternoon.

"Hey, Stark, there's a way to track texts like phone calls, right?" he asked before Tony had a chance to deliver his findings.

"Shouldn't be a problem, why?" Tony questioned. There was a slight rushing sound in the background, which Clint took to mean he was in flight.

"Have something for you to look at when you get back," he non-answered. Nat was leaning in, suspicious, and he had definitely caught Bruce and Steve's attention.

"Incoming now," Stark confirmed. "Have news you're not going to like either. Be there in five, maybe ten tops." The fact he wouldn't say it over the secure line meant one of two things: either he didn't think the line was actually that secure, at least from curious SHIELD personnel, or he thought he could stop Clint from going off half-cocked once he delivered the findings. Given that Stark had been able to isolate their transmissions in the past when he suspected a rogue agent, Clint prepared himself for the worst.

Their suites were on the top floor for obvious reasons and Clint swore he felt the impact as Iron Man landed on the roof. Steve, Bruce, and Natasha all shot to their feet, but he waited as directed, saving his energy until he had the proper outlet for it even as he longed to move now, to lash out, to destroy anything and everything that stood in the way of him and his daughter's safety. When the time came, and he was certain it would, all hell would break loose and he fully intended to be in the center of it all.

Tony arrived with his hair in disarray and his suit rearranged itself less than quietly into its supposedly innocuous sentinel format near the door. He dropped into a seat beside Steve, grabbed a random sandwich from the tray on the table, and tossed a data file at Clint. "Pull it up," he ordered around a mouthful of bread.

Another soft thud and the flicker of lights heralded the return of Thor, but Clint did not waste time waiting for him. Tony would have shared his findings with his teammate, and explained their significance along the way.

Clint kind of wished he would explain the significance now. There were rows of numbers and locations, columns of dates and what appeared to be monetary transactions. Over the last few months, the outgoing dwarfed the incoming, and what looked to be the reserves had dwindled down to nothing.

"Is this some sort of bookie's sheet?" he asked, exposing his own ignorance.

"Something like that," Tony agreed before accepting the soda from Steve. He reached over and enlarged a section, then highlighted a subsection within.

Bruce leaned close and silently asked permission to analyze the data. Clint nodded, and watched even more numbers scroll across the screen. "Whoever this is was seriously in the red," he commented. "We're talking easily in the tens of thousands of dollars." He paused and pushed his glasses further up his nose before he looked up with a dawning expression of recognition. "This is from the laptop, isn't it?"

"The boy is corrupt," Thor announced in agreement. He looked over to Clint sympathetically and added, "It is possible your daughter was drawn in not by her connection to you, but that of her brother."

Clint minimized the image and resisted the urge to put a fist through the projection knowing it would serve no purpose. He shook his head, mind connecting far too many things at once. "No," he finally said, knowing he had the full attention of his team. "She was taken because of her connection to me. That's what Karen... That's what the message to the Tower was."

"Explain," Steve ordered. He and the others had closed ranks around him, the few SHIELD agents assigned to supposedly keep them in line pushed to the far corner of the room and looking less than comfortable by the effort. They always got nervous when the team rallied around each other, and they always got nervous when they were purposely and obviously excluded. Add in the fact that Tony had left the suit in a way that it seemed to glare disapprovingly at any move they made, and they were definitely less than pleased.

"Josh got in over his head and these guys, whoever he was dealing with, figured out he had a family they could squeeze. When they figured out that there was no way Karen could ever come close to paying this off, they moved on to the next level, and found me," he explained, voice painfully even and level. 

"Why you and not Josh's father? Wouldn't they go after him first?" Bruce asked.

Natasha answered that for him with a shake of her head. "Michael died three years ago from cancer."

"No retirement or pension?" Tony guessed.

Now it was Clint's turn to shake his head. "Mike was a good guy and a great stepdad to Lisa; he didn't even mind me randomly showing up to throw a wrench in their lives. He was middle management for a small firm though - he paid his bills and not much else. The majority of their savings went to treatment costs before Karen dared to tell me and I did what I could to help."

"Do you have this kind of money?" Steve asked, gesturing at the now closed file.

"I can get it easily enough," Clint confirmed. At the surprised look he received for the effort, he shrugged, "Working for SHIELD doesn't exactly pay chump change, and I've got money hidden away from earlier jobs. I can get it, but it will probably take a day or so." There were people who owed him, some more than simple cash, and he was not above calling in each and every mark if need be.

He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair, trying his damnedest to keep calm. Money. It was all about money. Karen's death, a very obvious attack on Lisa, and it all came down to cash. He saved the world from alien monsters, but couldn't save the people he cared about from the same people he had tried to protect.

Stark's voice broke him out of his reverie. "Ignore the where to get it aspect for a moment because you all know I'm good for it," he said, cutting a hand through the air as if that was that. Clint would have thanked him for it, but knew it was not that simple.

"We need to find Lisa Barton, and her brother Josh," Thor agreed.

"Matthews," Clint corrected absently. "Though Josh is Sanders." Lisa had kept her mother's last name and Karen had been independent enough to never change hers in the first place. Lisa had never been a Barton in anything but spirit, and he had thanked the universe at large for small favors throughout his life for that fact. It was supposed to make it harder to find her, supposed to protect her while her father was away doing things no little girl should ever know about.

"We need to trace back just who the little redheaded stepchild owed money to," Stark was saying. He waved off Thor's expected commentary on knowing Josh's physical attributes and continued, "The data was incomplete - amounts owed, yeah, whatever, but just who the hell he owed it to was abbreviated."

"Code?" Steve asked. He had proven useful in sorting such things out in the past. Not the randomized computer garble, but the plain and simple type that someone would use on the fly. He saw connections where others saw letters or numbers, and had even managed to solve one grouping before Tony had finished programming an algorithm for it. It could have been something left over from the war, from the days before complex computer processing, or it could have just been an innate talent of his like his drawing or ability to bluff everyone and everything at poker.

"The kid is what, twenty-something? A young twenty-something?" Bruce guessed.

"Twenty-two," Clint answered automatically. "Josh is from Mike's first marriage and older than Lisa."

"So nothing overly complex," Tony finished for him. "Start with basic initials and go on from there. I'll have JARVIS analyze it as well, just in case we got a wunderkid on our hands, but I'm kinda doubting it if he sucked at math." He pulled up another set of files and pushed the first group onto a tablet for Steve and Bruce to pour over. "While Cap breaks out his mad code breaker skills, I believe you asked me something about texts?"

Clint held out the phone he had been playing with, reading and rereading the same messages again and again. "Something seems off, but I can't figure out what it is," he admitted.

Stark took the phone and eyed it critically. It had been a gift from Clint for her birthday, though the model was nearly two years old now. "I could have gotten you a better one for her, you know, if I had known she existed," he commented as he flipped it around in his hand. It was a subtle cut about secrecy, but mainly just Stark being Stark about his own inventions.

"Because giving a sixteen year old the latest tech is the world's most responsible idea," Natasha muttered, voicing Clint's own thoughts for him.

"Think of it as stress testing. Build a better and more sturdy product. Update the tracker app for the sheer number of times it's left in a locker. That sort of thing," Tony said easily enough. He opened the call log and frowned. "Yeah, definitely something weird," he agreed. "Where are the rest of them?"

"Rest of what?" Clint asked. He stood and peered over Tony's shoulder, but saw only the same twelve texts and same four phone calls.

Tony looked at him as though he knew he could be brighter. "Natasha nailed it when she said sixteen year old girl. What kind of teenager routinely scrubs her phone of past calls and barely talks to her friends while stuck in Civics class?" He pushed a few more buttons and the frown deepened. "Are you sure this isn't a knock off? She's got like zero memory on this thing."

He poked and prodded and removed the side and came to the exact same conclusion as Clint upon finding the empty little hole in the side: "The chip is missing."

Tony spun in his chair and grabbed a random tablet that may or may not have currently been in use by someone else. "Tracking now," he said as he typed. "Give me five, no, three minutes..."

Clint wasn't sure if he was using JARVIS or had appropriated one of his satellites and he wasn't going to ask, he was just going to appreciate that the man knew time was of the essence and that he had plenty of resources to abuse to make the most of what they had. He watched as Tony pulled up multiple screens, each seemingly with their own random purpose, and each streaming text and code as he moved on to another.

He pushed two files over to the tablet in front of Clint, continuing to type away at another, and directed, "Look at these and tell me what's wrong with this picture." His face was grim, serious, and Clint knew he was not going to like what he found.

The first was the equivalent to a call log, but for texts, just like he asked. It held only the past forty-eight hours worth of data, but there were dozens of entries. They seemed organized from most recent to past, and the top few were familiar and matched what he had found on the phone. 

The others began only about an hour before the time Lisa would have been taken, something Tony called "the cloud" listing the times the messages were sent, who they came from, and, possibly illegally, what they each said. There were the obligatory smiley faces and cutting comments about a substitute teacher that was in over his head, and there were four more from Karen.

That already pinged as wrong in Clint's mind so, when he pulled up the other file Stark had sent him and found the courier's manifest with the date and time highlighted, he swore profusely. "They had Karen's phone and texted Lisa after her death," he finally said when able to produce more than just profanity.

Natasha leaned over his shoulder and scrolled to a listing in the call log. "Josh's texts confirming Karen was with him are from after that time as well," she pointed out. Her expression barely changed, but spoke volumes to those that knew her. "That implies one of two possibilities: either they also have Josh, or he was in on it."

"He had the supposedly missing laptop and had updated files on it just this afternoon," Stark told her, clearly voicing his opinion on the matter.

"Would he harm his own family, or was he unaware of their fate?" Thor asked.

It was Bruce that replied, fidgeting and abusing his glasses and obviously uncomfortable but still wishing to put the pieces together for the others. "You've got a kid in over his head, likely being threatened and probably with a deadline. He gives up his stepmom and her connections, hoping they'll keep him out of it and thinking she'll just go to Clint for the money. They take Lisa as leverage as well, just in case Clint isn't feeling so generous towards a kid he has no direct ties to." He trailed off, clearly hoping for the best but expecting the worst and not wanting to be the one to voice either option.

"He might not even know she's dead," Steve suggested.

"Or he didn't think they would take it that far," Natasha suggested. She was not known for giving others the benefit of the doubt, but she was known for her experience with the type of people who were involved. Josh was a good kid, or at least had been the times Clint had met him. A bit overzealous at times, a bit of an idea guy without fully thinking things through, but he was still young and stupid and had time to grow into himself and the reality of the world, or so Clint had thought. Then again, he had known nothing of the bookies or gambling or anything else, so apparently there was the chance he really didn't know the kid at all.

That was neither here nor there at the moment, though. Honestly, as much as Clint hoped the kid had just made a run for it, he was far more concerned about Lisa. Josh screwed up and would have to face the consequences of his actions - hopefully those consequences would not be severe enough to equate to his own death. Lisa was an innocent - caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong ties to the wrong family members. He only hoped that there was enough of him in her, enough of Karen in her, to get through this all in relatively once piece.

He read through the texts again, a niggling feeling at the back of his mind telling him he was still missing something important. He scanned the dates and times, but it was when he reread the messages themselves, he found what he was looking for. "She knew," he whispered. It was mainly to himself, to voice his thoughts and see if they made sense, but he was not surprised when more than a single person in the room turned in his direction.

"Explain," Tony demanded, still scrolling through pages of data.

He realized the comment could have been construed as Lisa being in on it, so he clarified, "The texts, she used the call and response code I taught her just in case... well, just in case." He pulled up the relevant entries and highlighted them for the others to see. "Here, where Lisa says she has a Chem test to study for - Karen was supposed to respond with a question about Calc. If Lisa was fine, she would say it's a breeze. If she needed help, she'd say Einstein couldn't save her. Instead, 'Karen' just wished her luck."

Tony muttered something unflattering about needing such things, but grabbed the entries and pulled it back to his own tablet. Soon enough, it was side by side with the original truncated call log and he sighed, "She pulled the chip right after that."

"Why pull the chip but not take the phone?" Steve asked, looking up from his own series of data.

"Whoever took her would find the phone," Nat answered. She didn't bother explaining the search technique that would have been used to find it, and for that Clint was grateful. "They see it left behind and that she doesn't have a spare on her, they stop the search there and debate their luck versus teenage forgetfulness. They don't think to look for the chip, which would be much easier to hide."

"Pocket?" Steve asked, sounding oddly hopeful.

Clint shook his head. "Swallow," he said instead. Off of the looks of disbelief he received for the suggestion, he defended it with, "It's what I would have done." Natasha nodded in agreement as though it were the obvious solution.

Tony blinked twice and pushed forward, sounding less than impressed as he said, "Okay, so assuming she's daddy's little girl, which she has proven to be up to this point, there's very little chance it could have fallen out or been found and that will make the search I've been running far more accurate."

"It's just the chip, though," Bruce protested. "It wouldn't have a power source to send a signal..."

Tony stared at him, shook his head, and went back to what he was doing. "Yeah, so read the latest specs on Stark tech, realize how wrong you are, and get back to me, okay?" he said without malice. He turned back to his screens and watched the data scroll by for a moment before he explained to Clint, "We have the serial from her phone and can match it to the chip to activate the tracker, assuming you didn't upgrade which I figure you didn't what with your hesitance to give a sixteen year old things to break. Assuming the chip is still stuck inside her - which, ew, by the way - I can get you the location within about fifty feet."

"Do it," Clint agreed, not caring about the possibility of breaking several federal laws. They did that all the time for far less important matters than his kid.

Tony pointed to the screen nearest him and said, "Yeah, already trying. There's some sort of interference though; so far I've got it down to about a mile radius and narrowing."

Natasha pulled data from his screen over to one of her own. Soon enough, her screen filled with a map, the image fine tuned within seconds. "We've got a train yard, a corn processing plant, and some minor residential in that area. Thirty, possibly forty minutes travel time. Let your program run and see if it narrows down the search parameters by the time we get there," she suggested. It was less of a suggestion and more of an actual plan of attack, especially considering pretty much every member of their team had grabbed their gear by the time the coordinates hit the screen.

They had not yet reached the door when Clint's phone lit up, Karen's number on the screen. "Oh, because that's not suspicious at all..." Tony griped.

"Barton," Clint answered, the room falling silent around him.

Josh's panicked tones filled the line. "I didn't know! I didn't think they'd -"

Clint cut him off with, "You screwed up, kid. You have one chance to make it right."

"They have Lisa and mom -" he started, but was silenced with the sound of resonating smack.

A new voice came on the line, this one the eerie calm of the boastful, of someone who thought he had already won, who said, "Hello, Mr. Barton. We have something of yours, do you have something of ours in exchange?" The amount listed was, of course, more than what the sheets showed Josh owed. Apparently the men wished to be rewarded for their efforts, or maybe they had just gotten greedy knowing the potential take in the matter.

"I can get it to you by the morning, just name a place and time," Clint replied. He watched as Natasha and Tony scrambled for computers, undoubtedly tracking the call. "It will take that long to slip the SHIELD agents and get to the cash," he added. The agents in question alternately rolled their eyes or glared, knowing he had done far more for far less in the past, and likely calculating their chances of getting anywhere near stopping him. Those chances, should they be foolish to try, were of course zero. And that was not factoring in a very determined set of superheroes who were apparently willing to help him.

"Very good," the man replied, as if congratulating a small child. "I knew we could reach an agreement on this matter."

"You didn't tell Josh what you did to Karen, did you?" he guessed, stalled, tried to keep him on the line. Josh had spoke of his mother, thought she was held like his sister, like he himself probably was at this point. It led credence to the theory that the kid was in way over his head, far enough that he didn't even know where the water ended and the air began.

"Why worry the child? He's much more compliant this way," the voice laughed.

Clint closed his eyes, tried not to think of Karen's face, tried not to think of Lisa seeing the body or making the realization that her mother was gone. "Let me talk to my daughter," he tried. "Prove to me that she's alright."

"I'll do one better and even send you a picture," the man promised, the squeak of a door echoing over his words.

"Pictures can be faked," Clint pointed out. Natasha nodded, they had a lock. It wasn't at the fifty meter level, but it was in the same location as the chip Tony had been tracking, which meant the men were still with their prizes.

"But screaming can't," the man agreed. 

There was another door, then the familiar and thankfully extremely lively voice of Lisa ranted, "Fuck you! Untie me and I'll kick your fucking asses!"

"She truly is your daughter, isn't she?" the man laughed. "Doesn't know when to give up, spoiling for a fight. You won't fight though, will you? Not when you know what's at stake." There was another slapping sound, and then more profanity as well as some rather detailed threats as to just what Lisa planned to do to and with certain parts of a certain someone's anatomy.

Steve's eyes widened in surprise, but both Tony and Natasha looked like they expected no less. The ranting ended abruptly, as did the call. Clint reached for the callback button, ready to demand just where the hell he was supposed to drop off the money anyway, but his phone lit up with a text detailing that very information. Stupidly, it was Karen's own address, but listed it solely as a drop point with Lisa to be returned elsewhere. Attached was a picture, and he readied himself before he opened it.

It was Lisa. She was sweaty, filthy, and had a bruise blooming across her temple. She was also both glaring and mid-tirade by the looks of it, mouth open and spittle flying.

She was alive.

"Is it a Barton thing to be ridiculously stubborn in the face of adversity?" Stark asked with a wince.

Natasha answered in the affirmative so that he didn't have to, but handed him his bow as she did so to soften the blow. Clint texted back that he would be there, which may or may not have been a lie. He still may visit the house the next day, but like hell was he going to wait that long to rescue his daughter. He didn't even need to say such things to his team, which he appreciated. No one sat back down, not even Banner who truly did not need to go along on a non-Hulk rated catastrophe. Aside from Stark coding something over to his suit and handing Banner a tablet to bring with, everyone else simply grabbed their gear again and headed for the door, the SHIELD agents didn't even try to stop them.

He had to believe that some part of the men were smart enough to realize they were at risk. He also had to believe that they were solely bookies, with probable ties to something bigger, but had never played in the big leagues quite like this before. They reminded him of people he had dealt with for small jobs early in his career, with a lot of ambition, a decent amount of muscle, but no true view of the eventual endgame. They saw themselves as the big fish in the little sea, no one posing any real threat to them until the sharks were released. Given the grin on Tony's face as he told the agents not to wait up for them, he felt that analogy was more accurate than originally intended.

The trip to the area was short enough not to let his mind wander, but long enough to get into the right headspace for the job. He needed to focus on the mission, for it truly was nothing less than that. He didn't need to push his emotions away entirely or anything like that, but he needed to hone them, let them sharpen his focus, let them provide the drive to take on anything and everything in his path to get to the ultimate goal: his daughter.

The trace never fully narrowed, but they managed to get it close enough to indicate an area that included the very edge of the processing plant and the tracks that led from that to the Eastern side of the train yard. There were only a handful of cars there, most rusted and desolate, but the metal might well have been enough to alter the signal. Stark offered to scan them all, plus a few further out in case the signal was well and truly fried, and he let him. There was too much interference still to tell the difference between the heat signatures of wandering hobos and critters versus those of adult human males toting around an almost-adult human female.

They landed the Quinjet well outside of the immediate area and made their way in on foot, the few lights actually helpfully creating deeper shadows in the overwhelming dark instead of revealing their arrival. Tony veered off towards the trains, and Steve followed to provide ground support, Bruce at his side. Thor went up top on the plant to check for movement and he waited until he disappeared from view to switch off his comm.

Natasha did the same before she whispered, "Well, now that you have successfully gotten our teammates out of the fray, should we go in for the kill?"

"You're the one who screwed with the signal," he offered, not even bothering with a shrug or a denial.

"Actually, I didn't," she admitted. She darted forward and pressed her back up against a wall, waited for him to rejoin her before she added, "Old chip inside a person next to multiple hunks of metal? I tried to refine it as much as I could so we could find her and get her out with minimal collateral damage."

He looked at her from the corner of his eye, tried to tell if she was telling the truth,and gave it up as a lost cause. "You okay if there is damage?" he eventually asked.

She armed her gauntlets and flipped the safety off of her guns, and he decided he didn't need much more reassurance than that. She led the way and he brought up the rear, protecting their six as well as providing the long distance cover should she somehow be seen. Not that such a thing was likely what with the multiple doors and railings and everything else providing the cover of far too many shadows which could hide others as well as they hid the pair themselves had the bad guys been smart enough to take advantage of them. "How'd you know?" he asked when she chose one door over another and descended the metal stairway behind. They had already traveled through a maze of metal and levels, not yet finding what they needed.

"The train cars would have sounded different," she replied. "There was no echo, no metal doors sliding or locking. It sounded wrong." She darted around another corner, and he stayed close behind, close enough to hear her barely breathed, "And you?"

"There was a window behind Lisa, high left corner, just the edge really," he explained, remembering the image clearly, having already burned it into his memory. "Too high to be a train, wrong shape. If there wasn't a depot, she'd have to be here."

"Not a basement? There's residential too," she reminded him.

"Too industrial," he shrugged. "Didn't feel right." He had learned to trust his instincts over the years as they had served him well. Right now, his instincts told him Stark had actively tried to get as close as possible, the trains were excluded as not soundproof enough, and the factory screamed of the cliches idiotic and dangerous mobsters would go for.

Natasha pressed back against another wall, three doors before them, each identical save for what they may reveal once opened. "And now?" she prompted.

He gestured to the far left for her and stepped into place for the one on the right. "Now we go save my kid."

She nodded and reached for the right, just as he had expected, ignoring the left entirely. Hers opened to a stairwell that led upwards, and his opened to a short passage that seemed to lead to a processing area, a handful of tiny offices lining a small corridor that preceded that, and then a railing that appeared to look out over the main floor. He suspected the stairs would end up with another view of the same area, just as he expected he needed to work fast.

He took out two goons that peeked out of one of the offices at the sound of the metal door clicking along the grated steel floor that he had not been able to completely mask. One might well live, the other most likely would not. He stripped them of any tech they may have and locked them away where they would either do no damage or simply bleed out before this was over.

The office furthest out held Josh's jacket and the remains of some takeout, enough for two though he doubted the kid had been granted something eighty-proof to go along with his chicken. It was unlocked and damn near pristine, holding only the casual messiness of someone waiting with nothing active to do.

It rather pissed him off, if he was honest with himself. Josh was in on this far deeper than they had thought, or so it seemed. He didn't have time to dwell on that though, as the boy in question's voice echoed against metal and drywall as he complained, "Oh, come on, this wasn't part of the deal! What are you doing?"

There was the sound of a resounding smack, followed by a splutter of outrage, followed by a new voice that answered, "Gotta make it look convincing, right?"

A second voice, adult male, added, "Also, you've kinda outlived your usefulness." It was honest in a damning way.

"What do you mean?" Josh demanded. "I did what you asked. I got you your numbers and made the call and... You can't just leave me here!"

The first voice was back, somehow both smug and placating at the same time. "You stay put 'til this is done. We're letting that hero of yours know where your sister is when we get the cash; they'll search the place and find you then."

"Probably tomorrow morning, maybe early afternoon tops," the second voice agreed.

"Morning?" Josh verified. His voice trembled slightly, terrified yet trying to seem like it was no big deal. "Okay, yeah, that makes sense."

There was a slam and a click and then the voices outright laughed. "The kid's an idiot. Only thing he's been good for so far is this gig," one of the men commented.

The other one snorted in agreement. "Let's see how this pans out first. Maybe we can keep him and that sister of his around and press this hero guy a little more?"

The voices started to fade, the footfalls growing fainter, and Clint took the shot out of spite. Two arrows, two hits, two men to further subdue before they called in the calvary. 

"Where is she?" he demanded, low and violent.

One man lashed out and received a broken wrist for his troubles. The other tried for a knife and had his intent returned with interest, the blade digging deep next to the shaft of the arrow.

"Where is she?" he asked again.

"Already gone, or close enough to it," the first man chuckled. He reached for a radio, but never actually got to flip the switch.

Clint took to the obvious place first, and ran to the railing that overlooked the factory floor. The floor was partitioned, but the area he could see was clear save for a few scuffs of footprints leading in damn near every direction. It didn't feel right. He had to be missing something.

He didn't bother with checking on Josh, didn't trust his anger not to do something to a dumb kid that got in way too far over his head. The boy would have repercussions enough to deal with in the coming days, and would likely only slow him down with wheedling and lies. Instead, he darted over to the far edge of this particular section and tried to look around a hunk of metal to see what lay on the other side.

What lay on the other side was, of course, Natasha. She was still a level above him, the slumped shadow of a body at her feet. She spotted him instantly and pointed to her ear, a sign to switch back on his comm. "This side's clear, check the Northeast," she directed, voice barely above a whisper.

He ran to the other side of the overlook, not wasting time with finding stairs and doors or other more practical things. There was another hunk of metal and a crumbling partition but, more importantly, there was a hint of a window that sparked more than a slight memory. 

One thing he would say about factories was that they were easy to sneak around in if you knew how. The grating and the supports, the braces for the various levels, all of these provided handholds and launch points, gifted him with shadows and angles he never would have had if he had stuck to the boring maze of cement and ground levels. A handful of jumps and swings and two good twists later, and he was there, the most glorious target of all in sight.

Lisa was locked to the frame of one of the many pieces of machinery that lay about the place. From his current angle, her back was mostly to him, but he could see the rise and fall of her torso, knew that she was still alive and breathing, knew that she was still standing even if she was slumped a little against greasy metal and dust.

He let out a slow breath and felt his heart slow down to only racing, mind already calculating how to get down to her and if he'd be able to get her out of there without resorting to Thor or Steve's extra strength should he not be able to pick the locks. He tapped his comm twice and heard the background chatter, the musing and bitching of his friends and teammates, flutter away to silence.

"Where the fuck is Greg?" a voice asked from the shadows.

He turned his head slightly, dared to look away from his daughter to see two men in overpriced suits pacing at the end nearest the next partition. The second shrugged and checked a radio, gave a call and response that went unanswered. "Reynolds and Gowan are going to go check," he grunted. 

"I don't like it," the first one said. "Seems too easy. The money's incoming with no argument, no mention of the package? You don't think he's going to use those contacts of his to try something before the meet tomorrow?"

The second guy shook his head. It wasn't his cohort he addressed though, but Lisa when he asked, "What do you think? Is Daddy Dearest dumb enough to risk his little girl?" The fact that there was only a muffled curse in response told Clint that Lisa was gagged but, more importantly, that she was conscious. "You do know you're only alive in case he wants another verification, right?"

"Should've offed her already," the first man griped. "Could've faked some timestamps or whatever the fuck else was needed. Better than risking getting caught with some kid, or having to listen to Boy Wonder for much longer."

"Eh, they'll be gone soon enough," the second guy shrugged, unaffected. Clint tried not to think about what the man's meaning of "gone" could be.

There was a crackle of static before the radio burst to life again. "Shit, we've got movement! Upper level. Looks like Griggs and Burke are down," a new voice called out. Clint instantly looked up and across, catching a hint of a flash of red before the thud of two lackeys rushing across the grating, right past where that red was, caught his attention.

"Apparently the answer is yes, yes her dad is that stupid," the first man bitched. He pulled a gun, but Clint was faster, arrow buried deep before the man's finger ever got near the trigger. 

Lisa's head whipped around with the revelation, instantly tracking the trajectory and damn near giving him away if he hadn't already been moving. He kept his eyes on her though, saw her look of surprise and gratitude, saw her eyes grow wide with more than just surprise when a shot went off and echoed in the small confines of the area.

More men flooded the area, only about six of them, but that meant that seven stood between him and his little girl. He took care of the one closest to her, the one that was the most obvious threat first, upset that Lisa had to see him do such a thing but grateful that the arrow split the man's trachea and dropped him to the floor before he could fire the gun in his hand.

Thankfully, the men saw him as more of a threat than the teenager tied to a machine. He dodged a hail of bullets fired in his general direction, and then dodged the resulting glass and ricochet. He managed to take another three down before he needed to be on the move again, swinging from one support beam to another, ducking into the shadows to limit the risk even as he calculated the next shot.

His comm burst to life with Tony demanding, "Barton, what's your status?"

"I've got three more to go, Nat should have at least two. Lisa is within visual range," he whispered back.

"Negative," Natasha replied. There was a cloud of dust as a body hit the floor from two stories up. "I'm clear, Barton has another five on their way to join the three. This may be a bigger operation than first suspected if they have this much manpower. I will engage."

Clint didn't see any more movement on the floor, so he dared to look upwards to find the men in question approaching for the various catwalks and pathways that surrounded him. "I'm closer, I got 'em," he called back.

"Negative," Natasha repeated. A zip line embedded itself three feet left of his head and he was in no way surprised to find her exposing her position to get to the fight that much faster. She landed at his side, breath barely rushed despite being a moving target only seconds before. "I've got this, get to your kid." 

"Nat..." he sighed.

She flipped up to the metal above him, ignoring his impatience, and said, "Besides, I called dibs."

The men were now aiming more for her than for him, and he was smart enough to take advantage of that fact. He took out one of the remaining men on the floor, and managed to wing another who was either far faster or far luckier than he had any right to be. The third made a run for it, and ignored his cohort's new hiding place to head straight for the door.

Natasha had already taken down another two of the five and was engaged with the other three, dodging shots and landing hits. He was temped to join her, hating to leave her in possible need, but he knew the rest of their teammates were on their way and that his kid was still at risk. Not to mention the quiet diatribe that filled his ear to just get down there already because she had this, that there were more important things for him to attend to right now.

The jump to the floor was easy enough and then finally, finally he stood before his daughter, not denying the relief that flooded him to see her sweaty, panicked face. He pulled the gag down first, let her breathe easier if still harsh breaths, let her slump in her bonds but not quite rest against him yet.

"On your seven," she grunted, pulling back as far as she could to give him room to work.

He fired the shot and took down the man he had only nicked before, then scanned the area for anyone else before he dared to lower his bow and return his attentions to her. "You okay?" he asked.

She hung her head forward, tangled mess of hair catching on his uniform and tickling nose and chin. "Not really," she admitted, which he felt was fair enough given the situation. She tried to look upwards, hazel eyes through knots of dirty blonde. "Also?" she added, her breath still coming far too hard for his liking. "I think I've been shot."

He pulled back as if burned, hands a blur of motion as they ran over her. His fingers traced her arms and her clearly bruised wrists, trailed down her neck and throat and over her ribcage. He didn't even reach her hips before his hands came away slick and sticky, red staining his fingertips as much as the dark shirt she wore, as much as the steady trail that dripped down her side, barely hidden by the overshirt that was already stained from whatever other adventures he did not yet know about.

"Shit," he swore, low and violent. "I need a medic! I need a fucking med team here right fucking now!"

He barely registered Steve's promise that they were inbound, that they would be there shortly. He pressed against her side as much as he could, calculated the location of the bullet in relation to her ribs and vital organs, tried to stop the flow of blood one-handed while grappling with the locks and bonds with the other.

She grunted and it was all he could do to whisper, "Stay with me, baby. It's going to be okay. Just stay with me, alright?"

He had no idea if she responded or not, the breaths she struggled for making a sound somewhere between words and whimpers. He dared to let go of her side, needing her free, needing to hold her, needing to be there for her in the way he wasn't when she needed him most. His hands slid over the locks and chains and ropes and he managed to loosen one but it wasn't enough. He needed to focus. He needed to concentrate. He needed to push the situation as a whole to the side to complete the task at hand. One lock clicked open and he untangled the mess around it until he got to skin, bruised and beautiful, stroked his finger across it looking for greater damage when she flinched, and moved on to try for the next one.

There was noise, crashes and bangs and sounds of worlds of damages and he might have even heard it on some level had he paid enough attention to do so. He did however notice the hands, large and dangerous and only vaguely familiar, that stopped his own, held them for a moment, just long enough for him to try to whip around and take on the latest foe, before he recognized the shape behind him and the voice that requested, "Allow me."

Thor snapped the metal easily enough and managed to tear through the resulting shards and rope and everything else without causing any further damage or harm. He hovered, too close and too protective, and it took Clint a moment to realize he was serving as an Asgardian shield against the rain of debris that was still shattering all around them. 

He allowed him that purpose briefly, until he realized it may stand in the way of truly moving Lisa to a more secure and comfortable position. "Do you need...?" he asked, trailing off and hoping to imply everything he needed to say.

Thor understood what he meant, and took a step back as he shook his head and said, "Widow has the matter well in hand and the others are assisting." He helped lower Lisa to the ground, and into Clint's waiting arms, and returned to stand guard over them both. It was apparently enough of a deterrent as no one and nothing else came near.

Clint focused his attention on his daughter, on Lisa, on the way she looked far too pale and her clothing far too bright with her own blood. He pressed down on the wound again, muttered apologies and curses in equal measure and watched as she hiccuped and winced and finally said, "Dad?"

"I'm right here," he promised. He listened for footfalls, knew the medics or at least Bruce had to be there soon. Everything else had faded away, which meant either his senses were hyper-focused or Natasha had finished with her lot.

Her fingers drifted to his, curled around them more than provided any additional pressure. "Mom?" she asked around a gasp for breath.

He shook his head and hoped that would be enough for now. He didn't need her concentrating on that loss when she should be focused on surviving. She closed her eyes in response and he didn't even try to ignore the tears that slipped free and smeared dirt and grease across her bruised face in their wake. She sobbed and he felt her whole body go tense underneath him, pressed that much harder to keep her grounded in the now instead of a past she would hopefully have days or months or years to contemplate.

"Josh..." she started, and he wasn't sure if it was a question as to his well being or an admission to knowing his role in the whole debacle.

"Is handcuffed to a wall upstairs," he answered anyway.

"Good," she said, eyes now open and bright and angry. "Let the fucker rot." It at least answered the question as to how much she knew of his involvement.

"She is totally your kid," Tony said as he approached, Bruce in hand. Clint had no idea when they had actually gotten there, but didn't care because Bruce carried a med kit and Tony would be able to tell him how far out the full medical team was.

Lisa craned her head upwards and only blinked once at seeing the man in the bright red armor. "I heard him," she said. "I didn't see him, but a place like this echoes and the little fucker was in on it." She paused, let her father's hands be removed and replaced with actual gauze and bandages. "I don't know if he knows about mom though; even he couldn't be that evil, right? Please don't let him be that evil."

She started to fade and her babble became quieter and quieter and Clint watched as her eyes drifted closed. "Lisa?" he asked. There was no response and so he tried to shake her lightly without disrupting whatever Bruce was doing. "Lis?" he tried.

Bruce felt at her neck and nodded. "She's alive, just passed out," he promised. He looked to the bandages, the few that he had in his pack, and to the sizable puddle they knelt in. "She needs to get to a hospital. The bullet may have nicked something if she's bleeding this much - I can't know for certain with what I've got here."

Clint looked up to Tony, who had that far away gaze he got when listening to something or someone not immediately visible. "How long?"

Stark shook his head. "Too long," he replied. He shifted, crouched low in a whir of servos. "Do you trust me?"

Clint knew what he was asking, and knew what it would entail. His daughter's best chance at survival was not with him and it killed him a little inside to admit it. He breathed out slowly and said, "I can't believe I'm saying this but, yes, I trust Tony Stark with my teenaged daughter." He made light of the situation by rote, by overwhelming need to keep things sane and normal and real. He shifted, separating himself further, and stressed, "This one time or so help me..." 

"Relax," Tony said. He lifted Lisa as though she weighed nothing, body cradled close and protected, the shine of red metal quickly covered with something far darker. "She's in good hands," he promised. 

And then he was gone, leaving Clint in a room full of bodies and dust and his child's blood.

Thor clapped a massive hand on his shoulder, managing to startle him out of his reverie. "Do you wish to attend to the boy?"

Clint lowered his stained hands to his stained uniform, tried to look away from the damage and found himself staring at hunk of metal and chains instead. To say it didn't exactly help his attitude and perspective was an understatement of epic proportions. "I... I don't trust myself not to harm him right now," he admitted. Too much anger, too much betrayal, too much raw emotion was at play.

Natasha arrived, soundless yet with an undeniable presence. She eyed him knowingly and asked, free of judgement and perhaps only a little bit encouraging, "Do you wish to attend to the boy?"

He tried to smile but couldn't quite manage it, knew it didn't really matter anyway. He did, however, admit to a feeling of relief when Bruce suggested, "Maybe Cap should handle that one?"

Natasha tilted her head to the side, considering. "All American hero and symbol of goodness and righteousness talking to a kid who is personally responsible for the death of his mother and for his sister getting shot because of his own ineptitude? I may wish to see this." The undertone was clear, for those who knew her as well as Clint did. She would intimidate from afar while Cap destroyed the kid's sense of self and self-worth and together they would make him fear for his life in new and interesting ways.

Clint wasn't sure if it would be enough.

He told them where Josh was anyway, warned them about the others he had disabled, and wondered how much trouble he would get into if he stole the Quinjet and flew to the hospital to meet Stark, leaving the others behind. He was mentally calculating the level of groveling that might be necessary versus the fact the others might just pointedly ignore the infraction when a voice cut into his thoughts.

"Go," Bruce said quietly. He turned to look at him, and found he was fooling exactly no one. "SHIELD is on its way, and they will have transport of their own," he pointed out.

"Nat and Steve..." he started, but trailed off because it was clear his heart wasn't really into the sentiment and he was fooling no one.

"Will be fine and will meet you there after we clean up," Natasha's voice came through the comms. He didn't dare ask what her version of cleanup would entail, knowing only that Steve would keep her within some verifiable limits. "Take Banner with you; he might be able to use his credentials to get better updates," she directed.

Bruce made a face. "I don't really have those kind of of credentials, but most people are pretty persuaded when they know The Other Guy is in the same room with them," he admitted.

"Exactly," Natasha replied as if he had just made her point for her.

"Go," Thor bade. "I will keep watch over our friends as well as those who are not quite so friendly."

With absolutely no excuses holding him back, and a lot of want to take off running before they changed their minds or SHIELD arrived and stood in his way, Clint nodded. "Doc?" he asked.

"Right here with you," he verified. Bruce offered him a hand up and they both ignored the blood that passed between them, a thin layer of nitrile protecting Banner and absolutely nothing but red covering Clint.

They arrived at the hospital only to be ushered into a waiting room anyway. Nurses and interns passed back and forth in some sort of unsynchronized dance, and several paused to eye their blood-caked clothing warily though only a handful dared to ask of they were okay or needed assistance of their own. Tony joined them soon enough, wearing rumpled jeans and a dirty shirt and with his suit tucked someplace undoubtedly safe yet available.

Banner and Stark kept watch with him until Tony decided they had waited long enough without an update. Bruce abused his good doctor persona to obtain one before Tony could abuse JARVIS to hack into private files and security systems to get one of his own. They received semi-regular updates after that, more so once the remainder of the team arrived. The looks increased in frequency, but no one really dared with any commentary save for statuses and vague reassurances, so he really didn't care.

Natasha apparently did, or at least she cared enough to distract him. She dragged him to a room to wash up, Steve shadowing them and eventually tossing her a bag that Clint hadn't even realized he had with him. He washed, he changed, and he was silently thankful that she's didn't say a thing about Josh or the bookies save for that they were in custody and that the situation was being handled.

It was after surgeries - multiple - and transfusions - too many - and gallons of horrible coffee and sandwiches that tasted like sawdust and far too many hours spent in uncomfortable plastic chairs that he was finally allowed more than a passing glance and secondhand reports as to his daughter's condition.

He exchanged a hard utilitarian chair for a slightly padded one and didn't really notice the difference. He sat heavily, exhaustion a tangible thing, and stared at the dimly lit hospital bed that held his little girl. She was frighteningly pale with smears of bruises under her eyes, long hair knotted despite some well-meaning nurse's best attempts to tame it. A cannula provided oxygen and an IV dripped a mixture of drugs and a little machine beeped offbeat to the rise and fall of her chest. 

She was alive. It was a near thing, but she was alive. She was far from well and far from whole and her life would never be the same again, but at least she would have that new life to explore and he might even be around to see it if she let him have that privilege.

She didn't wake immediately, not that he thought that she would after everything that happened, and he was debating torturing himself with more scorched caffeine when he noticed that, finally, there was the slightest flutter of eyelashes against her cheek. She blinked awake with a wince and stared at the blank wall before her for all of about a moment before she unerringly turned her still glazed gaze over towards him. "Daddy?" she asked, voice impossibly small. She blinked again and her eyes became suspiciously wet and she hiccuped a sob and winced at the aftermath and none of it mattered because he was there and she was there and he reached out a hand and held on tight.

"Shh," he said even though he wanted to hear her voice, wanted further confirmation that his eyes had not betrayed him. "It's okay," he lied, and then amended it to, "It's going to be alright." He stood as close as he could and leaned in to try to get closer still. He kissed her forehead and felt her breath against his skin and her bony, callused fingers press against his own. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, steadied his own shaky breath, and centered himself in her proof of life. 

"You found me," she said, relief and exhaustion and something else coloring her tone.

"Always," he promised. 

"Dry swallowing data chips sucks by the way," she muttered and he smiled even as he felt his shoulder grow wet with tears he wasn't going to mention.

"It really does," he agreed.

He forced his eyes open again when he could feel her hesitation, the way her fingers tightened slightly even as they curled in on themselves. She turned her head just a little bit further, half into her pillow and half into him. "Josh?" she asked.

"I've been told he's in custody," he replied. It wasn't a lie because he couldn't do that to her, not now of all times. He was in SHIELD custody and not that of the local police, a possibly more dire and disappearing reality, but the last Clint knew he was in a simple holding cell waiting to be interrogated and nothing more.

She nodded and her hair tickled his chin. "Mom?" she asked next. She pulled back slightly, but didn't meet his gaze. She didn't let go though, so he figured she hadn't given up on him entirely just yet. "She's dead, isn't she? They told me she was dead and I... I wasn't there for her and didn't get to say goodbye and didn't think I'd ever get the chance..."

"We'll have a proper burial," he promised. He drew her close again and wanted to grip her tighter but was afraid of hurting her. Was afraid of hurting her more than he already had. He grasped the thin sheet with the hand she couldn't see, fabric nearly tearing in his grip but at least it let him get out some of his anger, some of his frustration, without causing harm to anything other than some over-starched linen. "I'm sorry," he said, needing to say it, needing for her to hear him. He spoke into her skull, lips moving against her hair, not sure he could look her in the eye right now and not sure he had the right to do so even if he wanted to.

He didn't even know if they had found Karen's body, but he didn't care. They would find a way, somehow, to do the right thing. If Lisa wanted closure, he would find a way to get it for her. Hell, if she wanted ten minutes alone in a room with nothing but Josh tied to a chair and a baseball bat he'd probably find a way to get that for her too. The only thing he couldn't do, the only task he simply could not force himself to complete, was to be the one to tell his daughter flat out that yes, her mother was dead and that yes, parts of her had been personally delivered to him. He'd confirm it if directly asked, but he simply could not say the words. He could not be the one to tell his child that her mother, the one who raised her and loved her more than anything else in the world, was dead and gone and murdered brutally solely to be used as a bargaining chip, solely to insure that Clint would know that the goons were serious and would do everything in his power to save the one connection they had kept alive.

He knew it was more than that. At some level, he knew Karen died to influence Josh as well, though he wasn't certain they told him before they got every once of cooperation out of him that they could, used him the way he so willingly used his family.

He also knew that no one and nothing, not even the building itself, would have been left standing had it been Lisa in that box instead of Karen. He wasn't proud of that, but it was a truth he would declare to those who knew him best, those who wouldn't ask because they already knew the answer, those who wouldn't judge because they would be there at his side amongst all the debris.

He could see movement outside the door, shapes distorted by curtains and opaqued glass. He knew it was his team, easily pressing against the security detail assigned to him and his kid, knew the detail didn't have a chance and probably knew they were superfluous anyway. The Avengers were not about to let any harm come to one of their own, and he knew they now included his little girl in that lot. They would, however, let a certain teammate slip away to a certain idiot to teach him a certain lesson he would never forget.

Perhaps it was good there was that detail there after all. They could report in when the head count dropped below a certain number and warn the agents that would pretend to care while being in precisely the wrong place at precisely the wrong time.

Lisa tugged on his hand, drawing him out of his thoughts. He dared to face her only because she was as stubborn as her mother and he knew he would lose that game of chicken. She met his gaze, steady if watery, shadowed and sleepy and drugged and alive. "Stay?" she asked, and he knew damn well exactly what she meant.

He thought of trials and tribunals and sentences both court and otherwise. He thought of schools and classwork and college funds. He thought of temper tantrums and stress out sessions and late night ice cream runs. He thought of room and board and moving expenses and security for keeping a teenager safe within a glass tower while her daddy ran off all over the world with a bunch of miscreants to save the day.

What he said was, "Always."

She clutched him tight and he returned the favor, held one world in his arms while another danced along the edges of his vision, ready and willing to do everything in his power to keep both safe even as he knew at least one of those worlds was willing to do the exact same for him and his. Given the way Lisa had taken care of herself, warned him at risk to herself, he knew he was going to have to amend that to both worlds soon enough.

He kissed the top of her head and hoped she had not inherited her father's need to escalate an already unsound situation. He caught a glimpse of Natasha peering on through the window, swore he could see the way her eyebrow arched just so even through the opaqued glass, and was more than a little glad that, once again, he didn't have to face this whole fatherhood thing alone. He was going to need all the help he could get to not screw this up, but thankfully he seemed to have a willing team of helpers on his side. Or at least a team willing to kick his ass if needed.

Lisa refused to let go, and he found he had absolutely no problem with that. She was alive, his team was alive, his family was alive, and he was going to call that a win.

 

End.


End file.
